Hidden Gem: Wacky Tag Team Partners Can Be Fun

I think they call this a mash up.

Thanksgiving Day Tag Team Tournament First Round: Magnum TA/Randy Savage vs. Mongolians
Date: November 24, 1983
Location: Omni, Atlanta, Georgia
Attendance: 12,000

This is from Georgia Championship Wrestling, who held a one night tag team tournament on Thanksgiving. The ring announcer welcomes us to the show and brings in GCW boss Ole Anderson, who has a trophy and $50,000 for the winners. Savage looks like he would in his glory years and Magnum….well he never really changed. The Mongolians are your standard evil team and had been around in various versions for about twenty years at this point.

Savage and we’ll say #1 start things off with Savage taking him to the rope. With that brings up in a hurry, Magnum comes in to headlock takeover (the much bigger) #2. Savage comes back in for the same but #1 tags himself back in. Magnum isn’t having any of this and knocks both of them down before handing it back to Savage for another headlock. Some alternating front facelocks have #2 in trouble until #1 grabs one on Savage.

#2 comes in for an elbow and armbar of his own but Savage rolls over and brings Magnum back in. House is cleaned and a slam puts #2 down, only to have #1 come back in and hammer away some more. A crawl between the legs allows the hot tag to Savage and house is cleaned, including a middle rope elbow (!) to finish #1 at 7:01.

Rating: D. Definitely a pretty lame match but this was much more about “hey did you know Savage and Magnum teamed together?”. They weren’t a regular team and there was nothing about them that suggested they worked overly well together. Still though, Savage is always worth a look and the middle rope version of the elbow was bizarre.